with all my crooked heart
by alanabloom
Summary: Multichapter Will/Alana fic. Book canon spoilers. Picks up after immediately after Hannibal's arrest and his attack on Will and expands through Red Dragon era.


**_A/N: _ **So I've been wanting to do a lengthy, standalone multichapter fic for awhile. This one's gonna span a lot of time, deal with some book canon...from Hannibal's arrest to "Red Dragon", but definitely not really focus on case details, but the personal, Will/Alana stuff. The only thing you need to know is that I, as always, made Alana and Beverly friends because I need female friendship. If you want to know how they became friends, you can read my oneshot "Misery, Company, and Beer", but basically you just need to know that they're friends now. Everything else will be clear.

Chapter One: Standing in the Wake of Devastation

_There comes a moment._

_The world slows down and comes into focus just long enough for you to realize how happy you are. And for a little while, entropy halts, and it allows your happiness to hover._

_Six weeks. Brief enough that this happiness is still a miraculous, precious gift, but just enough time to lure you into thinking things might just stay like this forever._

_You wake up curled together, limbs entangled, your head on his chest. He drops his lips on the crown of your head, mumbling a "good morning" into your hair before carefully shifting your weight from on top of him, leaving you with warm sheets and an empty pillow._

_"'S so early."_

_"Go back to sleep," he whispers, fingers absently trailing across your spine as he stands up from the bed. "I've gotta meet Jack about the case."_

_You let out a whine that's muffled against the pillow, still not awake enough to argue, to remind him he's not even supposed to be consulting and that Jack is, as always, trying to use him to catch the Chesapeake Ripper. That's a talk for later, when your brain isn't still fuzzy with sleep._

_You drift to that pleasant place between sleeping and waking, only vaguely aware of the hum of the shower or the pad of his footsteps as he gets dressed. Comforting, familiar sounds that emphasize his presence._

_After a bit, he leans down to the bed and kisses the curve of your cheekbone, featherlight. Your eyelids flutter, and you look at him. "Want to meet for lunch?"_

_"Sure. You're in class until one thirty, right?"_

_"Mmm-hmm. Meet in your office?"_

_"Sounds good."_

_You unfurl a sleepy smile. "Good."_

_"See you then." One more kiss, soft and quick, a practiced habit. He tastes like toothpaste._

_You burrow into the pillow and close your eyes again, intent on taking advantage of the half hour before your alarm will sound. You can hear his footsteps on the stairs, the distant barks of the dogs. You're already half asleep, unaware that the world is speeding up again._

_Downstairs, the front door opens and closes. His car engine rumbles to life, and he pulls away from the house._

_This is the beginning of the end._

~(W*A)~

Alana's heels click out a frenzied rhythm on the floor of the hospital. Panic is a hand around her throat, choking her. Her brain feels fogged over, cloaked in her own fear.

The terror is a sharp, metallic taste in the back of her throat. It's a leaden weight crashing repeatedly into her chest. And it's the shape and sound of Jack's words coming through her cell phone: _Alana. It's Will, he's...Hannibal stabbed him._

She can't focus, and Alana walks in circles around the hospital for nearly ten minutes, in constant motion, not allowing herself to stop and get her bearings because the second she stops moving she'll have to really feel this.

Eventually she finds Jack Crawford in a waiting room on the surgical floor. As soon as she spots him, Alana blurts out, too loudly, "Where is he? Jack, _where_ is he?"

Jack quickly crosses the room to meet her, face drawn and somber. "He's alive, Alana. He's still alive."

Jack's fingers close around her forearm, and it forces Alana to be still for the first time since the phone call. Her face starts to slowly pinch in on itself as she registers that this is the most reassuring thing Jack can find to tell her. That the fact that Will's alive is something that has to be clarified. "Is he..." Her voice breaks in half, and she screws her eyes shut before trying again. "Is he going to stay alive?"

"They don't know," Jack says gravely.

She still doesn't open her eyes, but her voice is emphatic as she says, "I need to see him. Okay? I, I want to see Will."

"He's in surgery," he tells her gently. His hand falls onto her shoulder. "Alana, come sit - "

She shrugs him off, agitated, murmuring, "No, I don't want to sit, I can't..." She runs a hand through her hair, forcing herself to focus for the first time. To process. Her eyes slowly open and dart up to meet Jack's. "Hannibal did it?"

The muscles in Jack's throat work furiously, his face tightening. "Yes. It seems..." He pauses, and the words come slow and halting. "...that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper. In addition to...being responsible for Abigail Hobbs' murder...and the other deaths that, ah. That Will was accused of."

Without realizing it, Alana's shaking her head, hard. She can't hold this information in her head, not now. She can't let herself tumble down the rabbit hole of these implications, everything it means about Hannibal and Will and the past few years.

"How bad is it?" Alana demands quietly. For a moment, Jack looks confused, so she clarifies, voice pulled tight, "Will." She keeps her gaze on Jack's face, so she sees the flash in his eyes that indicates he's trying to decide how honest he should be. "_Tell_ _me_."

Jack sighs, but he looks her in the eye and says flatly, "Hannibal gutted him."

The verb choice knifes through her chest, and a crooked sound lifts itself from Alana's throat. Her legs feel like water; everything's slipping.

"Alana?" Alarm is creeping into the edges of Jack's voice.

"I, um." She closes her eyes again, dizzy. She almost restates her need to see Will before remembering he's in surgery.

Her throat locks around an explanation, so Alana turns away and walks off without a word. She moves dimly through the corridors for awhile, and the walking holds her emotions at bay just long enough for her to find a restroom before the sobs take her over.

There's a woman washing her hands at the sink who gives Alana a startled look as she stumbles through the door, already starting to cry. But the woman's eyes dart quickly away, avoiding looking at her breakdown, as though grief might be contagious.

The woman exits out quickly, awkwardly side stepping Alana with a thin lipped, sympathetic smile before leaving her alone.

Alana slumps heavily against the side of a stall, vision blurring. She thinks the word _gutted_. And she sobs.

Her eyes are red and swollen when she returns to the waiting room and quietly takes a seat beside Jack. She's silent for awhile before asking in a hollow voice, "How long did they say he'd be in surgery?"

"They didn't know."

"And when you say...gutted." Her chin trembles, and she grits her teeth together to steady it. "Explain."

Jack gives her a pained look. "Alana..."

"I am a _doctor_, Jack," she snaps, eyes flashing. "And since you didn't see fit to call me until you got to the hospital, I am just trying to figure out what we're dealing with. Tell me everything."

She looks at him expectantly, but Jack only blinks at her, unsure where to start, so Alana prompts, "Was he conscious when you got there?"

"Barely."

Her throat narrows. "Did he say anything?"

Jack's eyes skirt away at that. "He was trying to explain to me, to tell me about Hannibal but...he was having trouble talking."

Alana waits, and when he doesn't elaborate, she grits out dangerously, "_Jack_."

"He was coughing up blood," Jack finally says, resorting to a matter of fact, professional tone, as though reciting facts. "A lot of it, and it made it difficult for him to breathe. Hannibal used a linoleum knife. He cut from his left hip bone and across his stomach, up to the rib cage on his right side..."

He keeps talking, and Alana nods and nods and nods, blinking back tears and trying to listen, to assess. But her stomach had knotted up from the moment Jack said Will had been coughing blood, and it had coiled even tighter when she heard the size of the incision.

Jack's detailing the moment Will's vitals dropped in the ambulance when, abruptly, he stops talking mid-sentence. That's when she realizes she's crying again, tears rolling steadily down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. Alana swipes her sleeve across her face and looks away, irrationally embarrassed.

"So it's bad, is what you're saying," she whispers. "It's really bad."

Jack doesn't answer, but he doesn't have to.

Silence unfurls between them for a moment, until Alana breaks it to ask softly, "You don't have to be somewhere? Running the investigation?"

With a small jerk of his head, Jack intones quietly, "I'm good here."

This time they let the silence settle, and nearly two hours pass before Alana's cell phone rings. She pulls it out of her coat pocket, where she'd stuck it immediately after getting Jack's phone call, and see Beverly's name flashing across the screen.

"It's Bev," she mutters by way of explanation, before standing up and pacing away from the waiting room, phone to her ear. "Hello?" She's met by only silence, and irrational panic flutters in her stomach. "Beverly?"

"Sorry," her friend's voice comes over the phone line. "I just...you answered and I realized I have no idea what to say." She exhales, slow and heavy. "What's...is there any news?"

"No." Alana's voice is very small all of a sudden; she sounds like a scared little kid. "He's still in surgery."

"Damn it." There's another pause, then Beverly asks gently, "How are you doing?"

Feeling a sob rounding in her throat, Alana lifts her free hand and presses her knuckles against her lips.

"Alana?" Beverly asks eventually.

She can't get any words out, just a strangled, gasping noise that makes it painfully obvious she's teetering on the brink of another breakdown.

"Do you want me to come to the hospital?" Beverly asks.

Alana swallows hard, finally managing to choke out, "Aren't you working this?"

"Yeah, but I can leave if you want." There's another long pause, so Beverly fills the silence. "They have us going over all these old cases, there's...so much evidence. I can't even..." She sighs. "Will was right all along."

The sentence pierces something in Alana, and everything she hasn't been thinking about suddenly breaks forward and overwhelms her.

Her mind skims backward over the last year. Will's trial, all that time he was locked in Baltimore, his arrest, the hallucinations and nightmares...the therapy with Hannibal.

Something clicks in her brain, and it feels like Alana's lungs have been doused with ice water. "Oh, God. Oh _fuck_."

"What?" Beverly asks. "Alana, what is it?"

Alana hangs up the phone without answering, dazedly shoving it back into her pocket. She presses the heels of her hands over her eyes. A scream is tearing at her throat, but she keeps her lips curled tightly together, afraid if she opens her mouth she'll be sick.

She stands like that for a long time, until Jack comes walking around the corner. "Alana. They just called from the OR, they're closing him up, and a surgeon's coming to speak to us soon, but they wouldn't say anything else..." His voice trails off, uncertainly. "You alright?"

"I...this whole time I've been blaming you," Alana whispers. Her hands are still covering her eyes, and her voice sounds like it's coming from underwater. "Ever since you put him in the field, when he...got sick, when he got arrested, _all_ of it. I blamed _you_, and the whole time it was..." She uncovers her eyes, staring dazedly ahead. "It was my fault. I...I did this to him."

"Alana..." Jack's face goes softer than she's ever seen it. "Alana, none of us saw what Hannibal was. None of us believed Will - "

"But I am the one who..." Her voice is falling to pieces. "I _recommended_ him. I've known him longer than any of you and I, I thought he would be the best person to...to help Will." She gives a high pitched, breathless laugh. "I try...I tried so hard to...protect him, and be there for him and...I'm the one who handed Will over to him..." She closes her eyes, sending a fresh wave of tears streaming.

Jack watches her for a moment, taking his time before saying slowly, "Your testimony was the reason he didn't go to jail, Alana. And...you visiting him in Baltimore was most likely he reason he didn't lose himself while he was there."

Her face doesn't change. She gives no indication that she even heard him. "You, uh. You said the surgeon's coming?"

Without waiting for an answer, Alana pushes past him to return to the waiting room.

~(W*A)~

"Hey."

Alana lifts her head, pillowed on her arms on the edge of Will's mattress and blinks blearily at Beverly. "Oh. Hi."

Beverly's face tightens as her eyes fall on Will. "How is he?"

Her fingers tightening around Will's limp hand, Alana looks at him instead of Bev when she replies dully, "He's comatose. They repaired a lot...a _lot_ of internal damage, but, um. He's body's been through a lot of trauma, and...blood loss. So. They think he'll wake up, as long as there's no...post-op complications, they just don't really know when."

Beverly frowns. "But...he's gonna be okay?"

Her voice catches, "Maybe." She pauses, then amends, "Probably."

Beverly goes to sit in the empty chair, across the bed from Alana. "I thought I could get the keys from you and...I'll feed the dogs so you don't have to worry about any of that."

With great effort, Alana meets her eyes. "Thank you."

There's a long pause, and then Beverly begins tentatively, "Jack said you might need to talk."

Alana refocuses on Will's hand. "I don't."

"Alana, this isn't your fault-"

"_Don't_," Alana cuts her off firmly, something forceful behind her voice for the first time. Her eyes flash in a way that makes Beverly drop the subject instantly.

Alana lowers her head again, tugging her lower lip between her teeth. There's a storm raging in her chest, a tidal wave of guilt and self-loathing threatening to engulf her. But she can't think about herself right now, or about Hannibal, and how wrong she was about him and all the devastation that came of that.

Right now she's scared out of her mind for Will, that she might lose him. That fear is gnawing at her chest, and it's already more than she can handle.

So Alana compartmentalizes. But she also knows she has no interest in having Beverly or Jack or anyone else tell her why it's not her fault. She doesn't want to feel better.

And she has no interest in forgiving herself.


End file.
